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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2008-01-17-CAC-MIN COMMUNICATIONS ADVISORY COMMITTEE Minutes for January 17, 2008 Present: Committee Members: Jeanne Canale, Dave Becker, Linda Roemer, Maria Kieslich, John Rommelfanger, Dave Buczkowski Also Present: Shelby Kashket, LexMedia; Ken Pogran Jeanne Canale convened the meeting at 6:35 with a quorum present. Minutes The minutes were accepted. Reports from Providers: th Comcast Report: Jane Lyman reported that due to the storm of Monday 14, some Comcast lines were brought down in Lexington for about 3 hours. Jane followed up on the issue of the request from the Committee to remove all INET lines. Comcast has agreed to remove the lines once the new budget year is solid. While Comcast will assume the cost of approximately $75 – $100K, it needs to wait for a new budget cycle because the removal was not anticipated in this year’s budget. Comcast has a fee increase that will take affect in February. Customers were notified in the January billing cycle. RCN Report; Tom Steel reported that RCN would like access to the conduit at the Senior Center so they can put in the INET to this location. Doing so will fulfill one of the last obligations of RCN under their existing contract. Tom also reported on an outstanding complaint where a gentlemen had, at one point, been granted one pay per view movie a month. Instead the customer will now receive a coupon for one movie on demand month, as pay per view has been discontinued. Verizon Report: Jill Reddish reported that Verizon now can offer to subscribers on Marvin road, remedying a complaint of a citizen on that road that wanted Verizon. New rates go into affect in February for Verizon for new customers. Chairman’s report On potential new committee members, Jeanne pointed out that Steve Blumenthal was still interested but unable to attend again this week. He had business in Europe. The committee approved the recommendation for appointment to the committee of Ken Pogran, who was in attendance, to the Selectmen. The Committee will wait on recommendation for Mr. Blumenthal pending his ability to attend meetings. Committee Selectman Liaison Report -- None Financial Report Redesign Update. Dave Becker reported on the results of his meeting with the Town. Michele Malone was able to produce some accounting reports which, along with information from LexMedia, could be used every month to get the infor would be put into a spreadsheet, similar to the one presented to the CAC recently by Dave and Maria. This spreadsheet would be what the CAC would use to track its accounts. A request has gone to LexMedia to provide the CAC with monthly invoices and they have agreed. Next steps: Dave Becker will send an electronic copy of the spreadsheet to the committee to review and so we can make ourselves familiar with the accounting. Dave Becker also reported that there appears to be some encumbered money in the initiatives account that needs clarification from the Town. Dave will report next month on if this has been cleared up. LexMedia Report Shelby Kashket gave a status of Kline Hall. The Avalon Bay lease had been signed by the Town and a consent to sublease has been signed by LexMedia with the Twon. This makes the lease arrangements complete. The architect was given the go ahead to proceed with the contractor . Shelby reported that, although the contractor bid officially had expired, they honored the bid and are read to go. The new executive director search is proceeding well, according to Shelby. They have narrowed the search down to 3 very well qualified finalists and hope to have a new director very soon. All the 3 top candidates are available immediately. In regards to programming, conversations have been held with LIFT and it has been agreed that LIFT will be carried on the Public channel. Most of the day Sunday will be reserved for the broadcasting of services. The issue of whether a live feed can be done from Hancock is still unresolved but LexMedia is pursuing this option. The programming for the Educational channel will comprise some SCOLA programming as well as some other school related programs LexMedia has put together. They will have some student programming of the TV studio class if it progresses as hoped this year. In addition, they are looking into expanding into student sports. There was discussion on an audio problem with the Selectmen’s room. Dave Becker questioned why, when an LexMedia person was on site, that they could not correct audio issues immediately since they were monitoring the audio output. It turns out that batteries for some of the mikes were not replaced, resulting in poor audio for some of the meetings. Shelby responded that this is not within LexMedia’s realm to fix but the Town is aware of the issue. WI-FI Update John Rommelfanger submitted draft text for the Wi-Fi report on the possibilities for Wi- Fi obsolescence. The CAC reviewed the text and made the following recommendation: delete paragraphs 3-7 and the first 5 sentences of paragraph 8. Insert in paragraph 8 wording to the affect of “ in our review of current technology, the risk of obsolescence of Wi-Fi is not high for the immediate future.” Next Step: John will make the changes, garner any edits he has from the Town economic officer, and resubmit a draft to the Committee for review. Wireless Ed Vail was unable to attend and there was no report. Complaints Both recent complaints were resolved as reported by the cable company representatives The meeting adjourned at 8:00pm Respectfully submitted, Maria Kieslich